Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is the version of Linux offered at the department. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only Linux platform supported by UiO and it provides UiO and the department of mathematics a unified platform between computing nodes, the Abel Cluster, servers, and desktop clients.

There are few major changes from previous versions of Linux provided by the department, but there are some things that should be mentioned.

Module support

Module support (see also its own documentation page) allows for selective access to software. By default, your environment offers the software provided by Red Hat as a part of the default installation, but now you can easily switch to more specific tools as needed. This is accessed by loading "modules" via "module load" on the command line. As people often want access to graphical tex editors or RStudio, this is managed via appropriate modules. "module avail" lists them all, but they most people would want to look at are RStudio and latex.

You do get a default latex installation with the system, but issuing "module load latex" provides a UiO-specific latex environment with UiOs fonts and logos included. It is worth keeping in mind that issuing "module load" in a terminal only affects that specific terminal.

New interface

Pressing the Windows/Event key left of the space bar opens up a search box where you can search for files or programs, to exit from this view, press the Esc button on the top left of your keyboard. There is no easy way to disable this feature as of yet.